TORONTO — The Ontario government needs to “swiftly and boldly” implement all of the hundreds of recommendations in a massive report released Wednesday if it wants to eliminate a projected $30.2 billion deficit by 2017, warns economist Don Drummond.

“Unfortunately, we’re dealing with a harsh reality in identity here,” said Mr. Drummond, author of the 543-page report and former chief economist with TD Bank.

The audit, which could be an example to other jurisdictions struggling to control spending, offered 362 recommendations in various sectors including health care, education, social programs, justice and labour relations.

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Canada’s largest province has been forced to deal with the fallout from a struggling economy that has shed thousands of manufacturing jobs, contributed to shrinking revenues and crippling debt servicing charges that amount to $10-billion annually.

Last December, ratings agency Moody’s lowered the province’s outlook from “stable” to “negative” and warned Ontario needed to take drastic measures to control its expanding debt load.

Ontario is living beyond its means right now, Mr. Drummond said in a news conference.

“In each sector we looked at, we can certainly both improve the quality of the service and cut the spending associated with it, but only if we introduce reforms. Not if we continue with the same approach,” he said.

Among his harshest proposals, Mr. Drummond suggests the government instill a wage freeze for doctors, that departments should not budget for any wage increases, improve the delivery of health services and ask Ottawa to be responsible for inmates sentenced to incarceration longer than six months.

The report, which took nearly a year to complete, also asks the government to consider axing full-day kindergarten, increase class sizes and raise the retirement age for teachers.

In its 2011 budget, the Ontario government had projected its deficit to climb to $16-billion, but Mr. Drummond says his projects peg it at more than double that if the province continues its current spending.

To reach the target, Ontario must decrease its total program spending to 0.8% for the next seven years.

The task put forward for Ontario is “very daunting,” Mr. Drummond said a news conference on Wednesday.

“The challenge and the solution will to have to be pretty much unprecedented in Canadian post-war history,” Mr. Drummond said.

“It won’t work if you just have a mindset of ‘I’m just going to take some money out here and there and do it the way we’ve largely approached this in the past’.”

The majority of the proposed cuts relate to reducing inefficiencies in how Ontario runs its health-care system.

Currently, it’s projected that the health-care budget costs will jump to $62.5 billion by 2017-18 for an average increase of 4.9% per year.

Mr. Drummond says to eliminate the province’s debt, it must rein in the spending to an increase of 2.5% per year.

He says he realizes that some of the recommendations will not be considered, but that the government needs to find other ways to come up with other areas to cut to close the gap.

“We didn’t really just approach this as a narrow, simple minded fiscal exercise,” he told reporters during a media lockup for the report’s release.

“We had to bear in mind, if you’re in it for the long haul, you want the restraint to get through not only the budget balance but stay in, you have to deliver excellent public services. That’s what people want.”

The report is likely to shape how other Canadian jurisdictions go about reining in their spending.

“I think the Drummond report could serve as a blueprint for fiscal reform across the country,” said Mark Milke, a fellow at the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute. “Look, Ontario is the biggest province, obviously. What Ontario does matters.”

According to analysts, the federal government and Quebec will eye the recommendations closely after both seeing their deficits balloon due to the recession and massive stimulus spending packages.

The Conference Board of Canada adds that which cuts the government chooses to implement will no doubt leave lasting effects.